TV Twitter

Is this the new face of broadcast journalism?

You decide.

Our local NBC-TV affiliate this week launched a new “interactive” format for its 5:30 p.m. newscast. In announcing its new program on Feb. 13, the station told visitors to its Web site that:

“With the rise in social networking/journalism via blogs, chats, Twitter and Facebook, @5:30 on 4 will revolve around these interactive tools to get viewers and users feedback. Instead of sitting behind the anchor desk in the studio, Cabot Rea and Ellie Merritt will deliver the news and interact with viewers from the heart of the NBC 4 newsroom, in front of their computers.”

I’m never home at 5:30, so am eternally grateful to The Other Paper, the alternative news in this town, for writing about the change yesterday and wondering in print whether “Colleen Marshall (also at TV-4) will show us her Tweets.”

While I haven’t watched @5:30 on 4 live, I have watched a couple of the archived shows. And, as proof of my own tech-savviness, I’ve made some screen captures. Here’s the first one:

Anybody who thinks news anchors have a cushy job should just look at the conditions Cabot and Ellie work under. No corner office, no mahogany desk. Even my cube is bigger than theirs.

While they broadcast the news as before, they invite viewers to weigh in with their opinions on the news.  And so, in the middle of the show, we get missives like this:

One of the hallmarks of the program is the mobility of the anchors. Here, Ellie walks through the newsroom to meet up with a waiting interview subject.

In this particular case, Ellie interviewed a respected healthcare professional at the same cramped desks they have to work at — while standing over her.

OK, I’m going to take a deep breath and tell you what I think. . .

First, I owe you a disclaimer. I come from a print journalism background. We never liked broadcast journalists anyway, because they tended to show up uninformed and ask stupid questions. And they would set up their cameras in front of us. We hated that.

Second, I know journalism is changing and we have to be open to that. But is TV-4 doing me a service by telling me what Jim in Pataskala thinks about snow removal? Hell, I can ask him myself. And if I want the news, I want it first without Jim’s opinion on it.

Third, I don’t hate the walking-around-the office format, but they need to confine their wanderings to a smaller area, instead of traipsing all over God’s green earth.

But there is a more fundamental issue here than format or style. Namely, does this greater interaction with the audience better inform people?  Does it not only draw people in but do so in a way that allows them to make the decisions that need to be made in a democracy?

In this era of new media, my biggest question always has been this: Who will do the real work that needs to be done? The man on the street? Or the women and men who, through our best days of journalism, have asked tough questions, made a hundred phone calls, filed Freedom of Information Act requests and never taken no for an answer. The kind of journalism that pulls the curtains away to reveal what’s really going on in Oz.